FRANCINE KLAGSBRUN

FRANCINE KLAGSBRUN Maybe one day my black-frocked friend will have a granddaughter who will thank him for having helped make it possible for her to lead women in prayer. Seated across the aisle...

...We chatted cordially, and he seemed pleased when I asked him how to say a phrase in Hebrew or whether a noun I was using in my writing was masculine or feminine...
...Why, then, do I remain adamant in support of this cause...
...No woman may join any other woman in song there...
...From government officials to.feminist lawyers, the same refrains were sounded: This is not the right time—the major issues now are the intifada, survival, peace...
...And because there is never a right time for change...
...And it may be acceptable to him for a woman to pray silently as an individual...
...It gave me perverse pleasure to know that, by helping me with my Hebrew grammar, this man had unwittingly aided a group of women he must adamantly oppose...
...Like the "Who is a Jew" issue, the question of women's prayer at the Wall touches on all Jews, not Israelis alone...
...Why would he be so adamant in his opposition...
...In a show of support, several Orthodox American women raised money from Jews throughout the world to buy a Torah scroll for the Israeli women...
...So is the fact that growing numbers of Orthodox congregations have organized women's prayer services...
...But the door began closing soon afterward when women in Israel tried to follow our lead...
...In the United States, women abolitionists were told to put women's interests on hold until slavery was abolished...
...Because I had carried the Torah scroll we used at our first Wall service, I was invited to present the newly purchased one...
...But a man from any country may join other men in songs of prayer (we heard loud singing rising from the men's section as a group of us was turned away from the Wall one day...
...The one question he never asked was what I was writing in Hebrew—what he had helped me with...
...Amazed that I was American, not Israeli, he barraged me with questions...
...The first question is easy to answer...
...Why am I, a Conservative Jewish woman who prays equally with men in my own synagogue, caught up in a struggle with Orthodox authorities...
...And on and on...
...It took women another 50 years to win the vote...
...That halachah (religious law) does not forbid such praying, chanting or wearing is beside the point...
...And at the Wall, custom and male authority reign supreme...
...Although reviled by the extreme Orthodox, we were buoyed by emotion and the exhilaration of praying together at that spot—Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist women...
...And maybe he'll be very proud...
...Where did I learn Hebrew...
...He can stop her from praying...
...And women chanting from the Torah or wearing prayer shawls are another matter still...
...The trip triggered my self-questioning...
...and women's concerns are always put aside for "bigger" concerns...
...Seated across the aisle from me on an El .Al flight to Israel was a black-bearded, black-frocked chasid...
...Why am I, a person opposed to harsh public criticism of Israel by American Jews, involving myself in an internal Israeli issue...
...And why was I on my way to Israel in adamant support of these women...
...Because for women who care about religion, prayer is a visceral issue, as burning as any...
...But public prayer services conducted by women—even services for women only—are another matter...
...As shocking as the treatment of the Women of the Wall had seemed in the United States, it was arousing little interest among Israelis...
...Or, this is a secular society—let's leave praying and the Wall to the rabbis...
...Why am I, a clear-eyed realist not given to sentiment or superstition, seeking a place at a site that has become a magnet for both...
...Instead, the Ministry of Religious Affairs has forbidden them to read from the Torah or chant aloud in prayer at the Wall...
...We left feeling we had opened a new door for women in Jewish life...
...After all, there are worse things a chasid can do than help a woman to pray...
...They are women who have tried, as a group, to chant from the Torah and pray together in the women's section of the Western Wall only to be bombarded with stones, broken table tops and shrill curses by men at the other side of the mechitzah (barrier separating men and women) who look and dress much like my traveling companion...
...No girl may chant a hafiarah aloud there...
...The right time for an issue is the time that issue comes up...
...The stifling of women who wish to pray together—whether Orthodox or Conservative—is equal to the stifling of women in a thousand other ways, and if women fighting this battle lose, women lose in the fight for rights on all fronts, including abuse, rape or binding divorce laws...
...According to custom, the religious authorities of Israel hold, the domain of public prayer belongs exclusively to men...
...The questions themselves did not even exist when a group of us attending an international feminist conference sponsored by the American Jewish Congress in Jerusalem a year earlier decided to hold a women's prayer service at the Wall...
...A Jewish boy from any part of the world may read aloud from the Torah during his bar mitzvah celebration at the Wall...
...Their pleas to government officials for a condemnation of violence against them were ignored...
...And because the Wall is regarded as Israel's most sacred spot, a symbol for all Jews...
...hence, my plane-ride scribbling...
...We began to converse...
...The answers have evolved over time...
...The issue of Jewish women praying together at the Wall has come up, and it won't go away...
...They were dragged from the Wall by guards hired by the rabbi of the Wall, supposedly to protect them...
...In fact, it was a brief talk I was to give the next night when I and other American women would present a Torah scroll to the band of women in Israel who have become known as the Women of the Wall...
...Do many American women know the language...
...I handed him an extra pen and said in Hebrew that he could keep it...
...Or, women have more pressing problems—abuse, rape, the bind of religious divorce laws...
...Noticing that I was writing, he asked in Hebrew whether he might borrow a pen...
...It may be acceptable for an ultra-Orthodox man like him to speak in public with an individual woman like me (although others might shy away even from that...
...Maybe one day he'll have a granddaughter or great-granddaughter who will thank him for having participated in making it possible for her to chant from the Torah or lead women in prayer...
...My second question is composed of a series of other questions I have asked myself many times...
...I've decided that if ever again I meet my black-frocked friend, I'll reveal what it was he helped me prepare on the plane...

Vol. 15 • April 1990 • No. 2


 
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